If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Welcome to Mac-Forums! Join us to comment and to customize your site experience! Members have access to different forum appearance options, and many more functions.

So my friend gave me her old mac computer. She couldn't remember her password to log in, so I just reinstalled the operating system. The cd said "Mac OS X install" on it, and when the computer starts up it says OS X.

you'll need to figure out what kind of mac it is and what os it's running.

my guess is you'll need to find a newer os.

Please participate in our Member of the Month polls. Every vote counts! And remember to use the user reputation system!["Dear Homer, I. O. U. one emergency donut. Signed, Homer." - Note by Homer Simpson]

well, is it a notebook, or imac, or powermac? what does it look like? does it have any printed info anywhere on the mac itself (even under the battery if it is a notebook style mac).

it would be hard to tell if OS X 10.4.x (Tiger) would even run on a machine without knowing what it is.

Please participate in our Member of the Month polls. Every vote counts! And remember to use the user reputation system!["Dear Homer, I. O. U. one emergency donut. Signed, Homer." - Note by Homer Simpson]

should easily run 10.3 (panther) or 10.4 (tiger). you could check craiglist or ebay for used copies. should be able to find them cheap.
not sure if there are separate versions for ppc macs and intel macs, but if you see different versions, make sure you get the ppc version.

i'm sure someone else will be by soon to give even more detail...

Please participate in our Member of the Month polls. Every vote counts! And remember to use the user reputation system!["Dear Homer, I. O. U. one emergency donut. Signed, Homer." - Note by Homer Simpson]

Yeah, I found that. It says it's 10.1.5. I don't see a "more info," though. It tells me in this screen about the memory and the processor, but nothing else about it. I'm curious if it would tell me anywhere how many GHz or MHz it is?

That's a very old version of OS X, relatively speaking. It's not all that stable, and fewer and fewer applications will run on it. Safari won't, as you discovered.

You should update the OS as high as you can through the Software Update Preference. Not sure how high you could take it. Maybe up to 10.3x, which would be a vast improvement. Even 10.2x would be much better. You might end up having to buy Panther, the last big OS jump, on eBay, or Tiger, the current OS, at an Apple store, to make the machine usable.

If About This Mac has no info on the amount of RAM installed or the processor speed, I'm not sure where you'd find it with version 10.1. Maybe in the Preferences somewhere.